One of the most powerful features of Fireworkz is its ability to store the layout of paragraphs and the design of type styles as named styles. This is done using the Style editor.
This chapter provides a comprehensive reference guide to the Style editor in Fireworkz. It explains how to set up and use styles:
Each worksheet starts out with several styles in its style list, depending on the number of styles defined in the template used. Any number of styles can then be added.
There are several ways in which you can change the appearance or type of cells. You can either:
All attributes can be changed by using the Style editor.
To change an existing style via the Style editor:
To add a new style to the list:
You should go to each section of the dialogue box which contains an attribute used in the selection and deliberately switch on the attribute for it to be stored as part of the style.
The Style editor appears when you choose New style or Change style. Because it includes too many options to put on the screen at once, it is split into several sections which contain items which can be considered together. (Historical note: this design precedes the introduction of tabbed dialogs in Windows!)
These options are listed on the left of the dialogue box. Click the radio button to display the section of dialogue box associated with it.
The first section of the Style dialogue box contains the style name and so is set for every style. It is also used to assign control key shortcuts to styles.
You may give a style any length of name you like, although in practice you will want to see the name clearly in the style list, which means that 25 characters is the practical limit.
You may use any alphanumeric characters (i.e. letters of the alphabet and the ten numerals 0-9) in style names. Style names are not case-sensitive, so you cannot create different styles called heading and Heading.
You may use spaces and the underscore character (_) in style names, but no other punctuation marks or symbols.
When you create a new style, Fireworkz will suggest the style name NewStyle1
.
However, it is always a good idea to give a style a name which reminds you of the purpose of the style, or the attributes set in it.
You can assign control key shortcuts to frequently used styles. To do this go to the Style section of the Style editor and choose one of the key short cuts available. You can use Ctrl-F1 to Ctrl-F11, Shift-F1 to Shift-F11, and Ctrl-Shift-F1 to Ctrl-Shift-F11.
Control key shortcuts can be used instead of the Ctrl-F2 (or whichever number was needed) rather than clicking the button and then choosing a style from the list.
tool button and selector dialogue box. So to change style at the caret you would pressThe Text section of the Style editor is one of the most used sections. It defines the typeface used, the size and colour of text and other attributes such as bold, italic, underline, superscript and subscript.
The font is an aspect of style which you will often want to change. It is made up of a combination of typeface, height, width, and attribute. You can also use colour. A font is a particular instance of a typeface, in a particular size and style.
All of these are set in the Text section of the Style editor.
Each typeface has a particular feel to it, making it more appropriate for some types of document than others. However, there are very few hard and fast rules in typography with most choice coming down to subjective preferences.
Typefaces can be grouped in several ways. The most obvious is the split between typefaces consisting of letters and numbers, and typefaces which contain symbols and ornaments. These typefaces are often known as Dingbats.
Alphanumeric typefaces are divided into monospaced and proportionally spaced type. Numbers are traditionally monospaced in all typefaces, but you should check this with any unusual typefaces you plan to use.
This is monospaced text
Alphanumeric typefaces can also be divided into serif and sans serif type.
This is a serif font; the letters have brackets and feet
This is a sans serif font whose letters have plain ends
Changing the typeface can have a major effect on the look of a document.
To choose a typeface to use within the style:
Try not to go overboard with type and add too many typefaces to your worksheet; it will just make it harder to read. Stick to a consistent plan for both text and numbers.
There are five different attributes which you can apply to your typeface singly or in combination. They are:
To add any of these to a style:
If an attribute is set in one style, you may want to create another style which turns this off, allowing you to remove the attribute.
For example, if your main text style is italic, you may want to use plain text for emphasis,
and should create a style called Plain
, with italics turned off.
To create a style turning off an attribute set in another style, you should:
This sets the size of the font.
Height and width are measured in points, the traditional printing industry unit of measurement, which is 1/72nd of an inch.
Usually, you will only be interested in setting the height of the font. To set the height:
The width of the font will be its correct width proportional to its height, if you leave the width set to zero. You may wish to alter the width of the font to create a special effect. This can result in unpleasantly distorted type if taken to extremes. There are two things you can do with the width option:
As a rule, you will only get usable results condensing serif fonts 10 per cent or less, and expanding or condensing sans-serif fonts by up to a third.
If you will be using a colour printer, or will be using your document mainly on screen, you can set the colour option and use a colour other than black for your text.
The Ruler section of the Style editor lets you set the values of tabs, margins and other spacing options normally set using the ruler.
Margins are one of the major attributes governing the way your text is laid out on the page. Each style can have different margins set, as you may want to make your document easier to read by having some sections of text indented.
Margins are the space between the edge of the printable area and the edge of the text. In the Style dialogue box you are concerned with the margins at the left and right of pages; if you want to set the top and bottom margins you should go to the Paper and Header/Footer dialogue boxes.
There are three margin settings in the Style dialogue box, corresponding to the margin markers displayed on the ruler:
Of course, your text will not necessarily sit flush against every margin, unless you have chosen full justification.
You can check the margin settings in a style by looking at the Ruler section of the Style dialogue box.
You should set margins using the ruler, which gives you immediate feedback on screen about the results of your choices.
You can check which style sets the margins at a given point using the
command on the menu and moving in or out till you see the margin settings in the status line.Tabs, like margins, can be set using either the Style editor (Ruler section) or the ruler. It is easier to set tabs using the tab icons on the toolbar and the ruler, but you may want to edit tab settings in the Style editor for precision.
Four types of tab marker are available in Fireworkz; their names relate to the way tabbed text is formatted by them:
The default setting for tabs in Fireworkz letter documents is that left tab markers are positioned every 2cm along the ruler. These tabs can be repositioned by dragging; they will also move if the left margin is moved, but they will always stay at the same place in relation to the left margin when this happens.
In the Style dialogue box, tab markers are presented as a list, and their type and position on the ruler is shown.
NB This section only applies if the Tab well is displayed — modern config files have it commented out.
To add a tab to a style using the ruler:
To reposition tabs:
To remove tab markers point at them in the ruler and double-click with the left mouse button.
It is much easier to set tabs directly on the page, and by ensuring that you have placed the caret in an area of text to which a style has been applied, your changes will be saved as part of the style. However, you may prefer to set tabs within the Style editor itself. To do this:
L | Left |
C | Centre |
R | Right |
D | Decimal |
Alignment is also set using either the toolbar or the Ruler section of the Style dialogue box. Justification is the alignment of text with the margins.
There are four justification options:
This text has been set with left justification turned on. The right edges are ragged and the left edges are smooth. | This text has been centred. The lines are evenly balanced but both edges are ragged. | This text has been set with right justification turned on. The left edges are ragged and the right edges are smooth. | This text has been fully justified. Both edges are smooth but gaps appear within short lines. |
To turn justification on in a style:
Setting an alignment by clicking on a button in the toolbar will not change the style but set an effect; either on all paragraphs in the selection, or on just the paragraph containing the caret if there is no selection.
You can also set vertical justification within paragraphs and cells. This aligns the contents of the paragraph/cell with the top, centre or bottom of the cell. This is useful for headings and titles within tables.
The default column width is set in this section of the Style dialogue box, in the worksheet's base style. However, you should not try to change column widths by changing the setting here. Each column in your worksheet has its width applied to it as an effect, so that you can change the width of each column individually by dragging its column heading.
The column heading is set in this section of the dialogue box. The default entry is that lower-case letters are used as column headings, so the writable field reads x#. The format description has the same syntax as the number formats in the Number part of the Style editor.
If you change the column headings, check that they are still different from the row headings, or you could create a worksheet that was very confusing to use. Remember that you will still need to enter cell references in their standard form using letters.
In addition to text and data there are three items to which you can attach colour:
The background is usually set to be transparent.
In most styles both the border and grid will usually be turned off. If you want a coloured, printing grid across a whole worksheet, outlining every cell, you should turn the grid on in the BaseSheet style.
Background colour can be applied to any area of text using the Style editor. When using colour you should consider defining the colour as a separate style, so that you can add and remove it without reformatting cells.
To add colour to a style:
The spacing between lines and paragraphs is important to the look of your document. If you don't leave enough space, your document will look cramped and be hard to read. If you leave too much space your document will be equally hard to read.
Line spacing is the space between the top of two lines of text which are in the same paragraph.
The standard line space provided by Fireworkz is 120% of the height of the largest text in the line. There are four main line spacing options you can use:
To set line spacing in a style:
Whatever line spacing you choose, you may want to add extra space between paragraphs. This is especially useful in long documents. A space of around half a line between paragraphs usually works well.
You can specify that paragraph spacing is placed before or after a paragraph. For headings, you should usually specify space above; for the main body of text you should specify space below. When two paragraphs, one with extra space above and one with extra space below, meet, the two spacing values are added together, so you should check your document to see that no gaps larger than you want have been added.
The Row section of the Style editor governs the behaviour of rows. Rows contain either paragraphs or cells.
You can set the height of rows using the Height option. This governs the height of new rows created in a style, but remember that, if Fixed height is switched off, rows resize automatically to fit their contents, and that you can drag row borders to resize rows.
Two further options governing the behaviour of rows are also set in this section of the Style dialogue box.
The row headings are also set in this section of the Style dialogue box. Usually this is a number, so the Heading box contains #. You may, however, substitute letters or Roman numerals. The format description has the same syntax as the number formats in the Number section of the Style editor.
If you change the row headings, make sure that the row headings are not the same as the column headings, as this could result in a very confusing worksheet.
The Number section of the Style editor governs conversion of numbers, dates and times for display. It also controls cell protection and new cell type.
These are described fully in the chapter Number, date and time formats